Susan Hiller

May 16, 2011

At Susan Hiller’s forty-year survey at the Tate Modern a viewer begins at a point of skepticism and ends up in a space that borders on belief. In the collection of works Hiller continually plays against the omnipotence of scientific method and technique. The sixteen bodies of work exhibited include Witness, a mass of dangling audio speakers from which emit recitations of people describing their encounters with UFOs. Magic Lantern, an audio recording made by the parapsychologist Konstantine Raudive, whose audio recordings in silent spaces reveal miniscule traces of sounds which are isolated, amplified and said to be spoken by voices from beyond the grave. And Homage to Marcel Duchamp, a series of ‘aura photos’ the artist found online in which ordinary portrait subject are wreathed in colored lights.

Susan Hiller | A Career Survey | The Tate Modern

“It’s a terrible trap: when art becomes an identifiable commodity. It’s one of the ways our society kills art.”